Speech #820229949

Nothing that was inherent in the substantive part of the bill has been changed by this conference report. only some procedural matters. I think. have been improved. I think the bill resulting from the conference report is wrong for four fundamental reasons: First. it establishes a color line on immigration from the Caribbean. breaking down to a small quota of 100 per source per year the longestablished procedure by which Negroes from the West Indies were admitted under the British quota. Secondly. it aggravates the discrimination against immigration from South and Southeast Europe inherent in the 1924 quota immigration law with its retention of the 1920 date for ascertainment of the quotas based on population despite the censuses of 1940 and 1950. by taking 50 percent of the present quotas and limiting them to immigrants with special skills. If Members vote "aye" on this conference report it will affect millions of families with friends and relatives in many European countries. whom they are trying to help emigrate to the United States and who will be unable to qualify under quotas because of that provision. Third. it adds jeopardy in status for those who come in as immigrants in regard to deportation and naturalization. I think in that the conference report has made some improvement but it still adds jeopardy to what existed before. and makes the time during which an immigrant can be deported very much longer than it was before. Fourth. it curtails discretion which we have heretofore vested in the Attorney General. and makes that discretion apply only in exceptional and unusual hardship cases. a very much tighter definition than we had for the 19 (c) cases before in which deportation could be suspended by action of the Attorney General and review by Congress. I think these issues are all fundamental. In addition to which there is in a new way the exclusion of Asiatics. because the bill now puts in a special status of a very limited number of 100 per annum prospective immigrants regardless of place of birth if of onehalf or more Asiatic blood. If the Asiatic peoples do not resent that. I miss my guess. For all of those reasons. which have been argued many times before.